Arturo Checchi was born in Fucecchio in 1886. From a very early age he showed a talent for drawing and began to appreciate and love the Renaissance masters that Torello Bandinelli, his teacher at the technical college of his town of birth, encouraging him along the pathway of art, made known to him by showing him 19th century photographs and engravings. With a surprisingly sure hand, at twelve years old Checchi copied those 15th century masters that soon afterwards, when he moved to Florence, he would never tire of admiring and copying from life.

When he was sixteen he began to attend the course on Ornamentation and Decoration at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, where his teachers were the artists that influenced hi...